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Suicide

sculpting

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This weekend one of my coworkers committed suicide. Around this time last year we also had a coworker commit suicide. We are a very small company so everyone knows these folks very well.

On this occasion the man did not come to work and three of his friends went to his house and found him. One was a very sensitive ISTJ woman I work with.

Their pain of course endlessly echos around inside of me, combined with guilt at what I could have done. Perhaps just being his friend, saying hi, letting him know he was not alone?

Why do people feel so alone that they feel suicide is the only choice?

What can you do to help them, what signs can you watch for?

What can a company do to help prevent this in the future with respect to HR initiatives?
 

Lark

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I dont know what a company could do, I'm unsure what they should do.

There are obvious things, it helps if there are clear boundaries of responsibility, accountability and merit in any workplace. Bad middle managers or colleagues will maximise their income, work leave, training opportunities, prestige even and minimise their responsibility or workload through delegation or office politics. Those are bad things, signs of a broken workplace and it could be more than simple dynamics, it could be a structural problem. I'm not talking about those things though, any business should have those things in mind anyway.

In some respects I would say the same about you yourself, I'm not sure that people should be able to expect others to be responsible for their own emotional self-regulation. Particularly if they are strangers or there is a purely business relationship between you and them. I'm not sure individuals, such as yourself, should feel guilt or anxiety about not intervening with others to help.

Feelings of loss are to be expected, particularly if you were close, likewise sympathy or empathy because as humans we have an imagination and can put ourselves in the position or predicament of others. However beyond a certain point it will become self-injurious and if you cant take care of yourself first and foremost you cant take care of anyone else after that (if you believe that you should).

Personally, by reason of my beliefs, I'm life affirming and try to consciously be so in all my interaction with others but what I've found is most important over the years is to be so with myself also. If you've got a strong emotional competence, social competence and develop a capacity for reflection and insight then not only will you be well yourself others can model your behaviour, even when you're not consciously doing it, you'll be helping others.
 

Fluffywolf

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Having dealt with this, pardon my expression, shit. I can say that the last thing you want to do is trying to figure out how you can influence and stop people from doing what they do. It's an endless pit. I am now of opinion that some people just kill themselves, and even though that's idiotic and stupid, it's ultimately their right and thus deserve no pity for doing what they believe is right. As harsh as it sounds, best to forget about them and just move on like it never happened. Because that's about as much as they deserve.

Thinking about how it could be prevented gets you nowhere. You'll keep remembering little things and blame yourself for never seeing it and never recognizing it. And it just gets worse and worse. You'll start blaming yourself for their deaths, thinking.. No, knowing you could have prevented it. I've been there for a few years, and tell you know, don't go there. There's no solution, no absolute truth, you couldn't have prevented it, and you're not to blame.

Best way to deal with it, is not to deal with it at all.
 

Lark

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I think you have to deal with, at least processing the event.

Although personal responsibility is an objective truth and reality, someone who has died by their own hand is responsible for their death, no one else is.

At the very most others are responsible for a kind word etc. although who is to say that would have prevented it? Maybe it would and maybe it wouldnt have, "what if" isnt a good game to play with either the past or future.

Now, after the fact, after the event those left behind are responsible for how the event effects them, will they experience vacarious trauma, if they do how will they respond to it and will it become all consuming or not.

Suicide is always a permanent solution to a temporary problem, when it happens its tragic but it shouldnt become an outbreak or a rash which spreads to others behaving likewise.
 

JivinJeffJones

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If he had three friends who cared enough to go looking for him (including a coworker) then he wasn't doing too badly in the friends department. So I doubt one more friend would've made much of a difference, unless you managed to get him to open up somehow. Any idea on his type? I'm guessing you didn't know him all that well personally.
 

sofmarhof

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What can a company do to help prevent this in the future with respect to HR initiatives?

No idea. I go to NYU, which has a reputation for lots of student suicides. (Statistically, it has a lower suicide rate than the country, but it's a big school). There was one this semester, and we got an email from the president that was basically trying to say "It's not our fault!" Horrible, insensitive move. At one point he said "NYU is a close-knit community" which, in addition to being a blatant lie, was basically saying that if the kid felt alone it was his own fault. So, that's how not to react to a suicide. But I don't know how to prevent them. Except for throwing antidepressants at everyone, which is what NYU's strategy seems to be.
 

Thalassa

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People commit suicide A LOT around the holidays. I think it's a combo of SADD (seasonal depression from less light and more cold, etc.) and the psychological implications of the holidays...brings up childhood memories, people remember family issues, feel more alone if they don't have anyone.

I'm sorry.
 

sculpting

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It turned out he and the ISTJ were dating.

I dont feel as though I personally could have stopped this or feel massive guilt about his death.

From a prevention perspective, However something innate inside of him pushed him to feel he was utterly alone and of no value, thus should depart.

My ENTP and I argued for awhile. We framed the argument in an Fe/Fi context as it has been a topic of late. I think he was an Fi, perhaps an ISTJ, as he would respond to my Fi overtures.

She asked "can you not understand that you are always connected to other people that care?" Uh. no.

I explained to her that Fi can be a very intense single pointed connection. We connect very sparsely as it is such a sensitive connection. When severed, it is excrutiating and leaves one feeling profoundly alone. I think for her, Fe is a more open, less vulnerable way to interface, thus she never feels utterly isolated?
 

Economica

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This weekend one of my coworkers committed suicide. Around this time last year we also had a coworker commit suicide. We are a very small company (...)

Two suicides in one year in one small company? Yikes.
 

_Violence_

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I believe suicide is most likely to occur when someone TRULY BELIEVES they have nothing else to live for; specifically that happiness is an unattainable goal anymore for them.
 

Fluffywolf

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I believe suicide is most likely to occur when someone TRULY BELIEVES they have nothing else to live for; specifically that happiness is an unattainable goal anymore for them.

Who can say, most people that kill themselves, keep those feelings to themselves, and it's kind of hard to ask why they killed themselves after they killed themselves.

In my experience, a person can seem genuinly happy and living a good life, and still commit suicide. Without any apparant motive.
 

Lark

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Who can say, most people that kill themselves, keep those feelings to themselves, and it's kind of hard to ask why they killed themselves after they killed themselves.

In my experience, a person can seem genuinly happy and living a good life, and still commit suicide. Without any apparant motive.

Primo Levi is a good example, he just took a revolver out of draw one day and shot himself through the head.
 

sculpting

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I believe suicide is most likely to occur when someone TRULY BELIEVES they have nothing else to live for; specifically that happiness is an unattainable goal anymore for them.

I really think a subtle biological trigger gets pulled.

I grew up with a lot of animals. Dogs, cats, horses, poultry and so on.

It was not uncommon for animals that were very old or got sick to just wonder off and die. Also mothers that lose young would act very withdrawn and go off of food. You would also see this when one animal of a group was taken away or died.

I wonder if the person begins to feel of no use to the social whole and thus triggers this innate biological mechanism. Obviously the mechanism is of no use to the survival of the individual, but would it contribute to the survival of the whole group?

You become very ill or very injured-perhaps it is better if you go away and die rather than slow the group down? It isnt true anymore, but thats not what the chemicals in our brain tell use perhaps?

Sorry, I realize this may seem very cold and calculating, however it is how I can rationalize and understand things that upset me emotionally.
 

_Violence_

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Social apoptosis?

Did you watch The Killing Room by any chance? Interesting movie to say the least.

On another note, my father committed suicide and I have contemplated (not often) the necessary triggers it would take for ME to kill myself. And my post above is the only way I could rationalize it; if happiness was something I believed to be an utterly unattainable goal.

But that situation is so improbable, people who DO kill themselves must have a different reason? I mean if I was a father, I think happiness could be attained by raising my own child, if nothing else...

Pretty sure my father was an INTJ
 

Fluffywolf

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Sorry, I realize this may seem very cold and calculating, however it is how I can rationalize and understand things that upset me emotionally.

The 'wandering off process' is only seen in animals of old age. Sick or cripple animals that are in some way not able to keep up with the pack, are rejected first, and wander then because they're rejected.
 

sLiPpY

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Social apoptosis?

Did you watch The Killing Room by any chance? Interesting movie to say the least.

On another note, my father committed suicide and I have contemplated (not often) the necessary triggers it would take for ME to kill myself. And my post above is the only way I could rationalize it; if happiness was something I believed to be an utterly unattainable goal.

But that situation is so improbable, people who DO kill themselves must have a different reason? I mean if I was a father, I think happiness could be attained by raising my own child, if nothing else...

Pretty sure my father was an INTJ

In my late teens, there was a man working with our youth group who was very jovial and had two sons, that were much younger than us.

He appeared to be a great dad and his sons were just awesome kids.

We had an over night "lock in" and I was just sitting around talking with him, while the rest of the group was off doing something else.

He told me a story about an exercise in perception they used at work, he was a sales rep. It's been so long I can't remember now, but something about how one could tell if a person might be suicidal.

The following weekend I was over at their house getting things together for an upcoming community service project. He had a really nice classic mustang in the garage.

A couple of weekends later heard that he'd committed suicide using the car in the garage. My best friend's dad was his best friend. No one had any indication that registered as being a valid sign of what transpired.

Excepting the conversation we'd had about that "exercise" in retrospect the answers he'd shared with me indicated, well...just didn't register at the time.

A few weeks after that, my friends dad said that the man had been struggling with a drug addiction. Which was a big surprise to all of us.

Felt so bad for those little dudes, it's like someone switched off a light in their own lives. They were younger than seven, so not yet at a stage to have the reasoning ability to well difficult issue for anyone to encounter at any stage in life...

Regardless of how it happens, it's something that's just inherent to life.
 
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